BCU 1525 by 🐿️ SQRL & ❌ Xilinx

The FPGA mining card, BCU 1525's are essentially a modified version of the Xilinx VCU 1525 offered by a few smaller private parties. GPUHoarder from SQRL Research is technically the manufacturer and seller of the BCU units. They source VCU 1525's from Xilinx, work with a manufacturer to make the heat management mods, and then do some post-processing and programming to make them mining ready.

One of the benefits of buying the BCU is that their devices have an encryption key burned into the device, which gives the owner the ability to use proprietary mining software offered by SQRL and mining software developers from Allmine.co.

Where to Buy?

Bitstreams

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Forest Kitten by 🐿️ SQRL

The Forest Kitten is an FPGA mining board with single chip VU33P HBM2 board priced at $1949. Right now, SQRL are taking orders from their first delivery batch for 10 boards and up but this is flexible. Shipping in June. Forest Kitten is using low power (approx 125W) and low heat signature. It is designed to operate like a GPU and target memory intensive algorithms. SQRL supports a number of algorithms in process, for example BEAM hashrate around 200 sol/s target, and SQRL are currently using this FPGA to mine ethereum at less than 30W for 70MH power level, expecting to increase overall hashrate.

Forest Kitten can mine algorithms like Ethash, ProgPoW, Cryptonight variants, Cuckoo Cycle, X16r, Equihash, etc. Fundamentally, it can mine any algorithms a GPU can mine, which includes coins like Ethereum and XMR, Ravencoin, Grin, Aion, etc.

Where to Buy?

Bitstreams

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Acorn CLE 101

Acorn is the first-ever cryptocurrency mining accelerator card. By using best-in-class Xilinx FPGA chips in an M.2 slot, the Acorn CLE-101 offloads and performs the least GPU friendly parts of memory-intensive cryptocurrency mining.

Acorn CLE-101 makes mining algorithms like Ethash and CryptoNight V1 on GPUs more efficient. It does this by offloading the mathematical calculations (such as Keccak) that are usually processed on a GPU ASIC - these are calculated much more efficiently on an FPGA chip.

Use CLE-101 if
👌 Mine Ethash or CryptoNight V1
👌 Want to lower the power usage of GPUs
👌 Want entry-level performance optimization

Don't use CLE-101 if
🚫 Mine core-intensive algorithms
🚫 Use top-of-the-line GPUs
🚫 Want the highest performance on the most algorithms
🚫 Want to use Acorn as standalone mining hardware

* Hash rate and power consumption figures are estimated and not yet confirmed. Acorn is a pre-release item and has yet to be battle tested ** Down to 60% with special tuning and down to 75% with official tools

Drivers

Where to Buy?

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Acorn CLE 215

Efficiently mine core-intensive coins. Acorn CLE-215 works with high-end GPUs to efficiently minimize bottlenecks, and it can dual mine coins to maximize your profitability. Acorn CLE-215 makes mining algorithms like X16r and Lyra2REv2 on GPUs more efficient.

Top-of-the-line graphics cards work well, but they’re still not optimized for certain tasks in the algorithm chain. They create bottlenecks in the hashing pipeline, and that means they mine at a much lower effective hash rate. There’s a lot of room for improvement. Acorn offloads and performs the tasks GPUs don’t excel at – and performs those tasks much faster.

Use CLE-215 if
👌 Mine Lyra2REv2 or X16r
👌 Use high-end, top-of-the-line graphics cards like 1080ti, VEGA 56 or VEGA 64
👌 Want to dual mine
👌 Want to optimize your power-to-hash-rate ratio

Don't use CLE-215 if
🚫 Only mine Ethash or CryptoNight V1
🚫 Want to use Acorn as standalone mining hardware
🚫 Want the highest performance on the most algorithms

* Hash rate and power consumption figures are estimated and not yet confirmed. Acorn is a pre-release item and has yet to be battle tested
** Down to 60% with special tuning and down to 75% with official tools

Drivers

Where to Buy?

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Acorn CLE 215+

Acorn CLE-215+ does everything the CLE-215 does while providing a 30 percent FPGA speed boost. This significantly increases hash rates for algorithms like X16r and Lyra2REv2 and enables standalone mining. Acorn CLE-215+ works synchronously with high-end GPUs to ensure the best hash-rate-to-power ratio possible. In addition, it can dual mine coins and mine coins without the help of CPUs and GPUs. It’s the most efficient and effective way to mine.

Use CLE-215+ if
👌 Mine Lyra2REv2 or X16r
👌 Use high-end, top-of-the-line graphics cards like 1080ti, VEGA 56 or VEGA 64
👌 Want to dual mine
👌 Want to optimize your power-to-hash-rate ratio
👌 Want the highest performance on the most algorithms
👌 Want to use Acorn as standalone mining hardware

Don't use CLE-215+ if
🚫 Only mine Ethash or CryptoNight V1
🚫 Want entry-level performance optimization

* Hash rate and power consumption figures are estimated and not yet confirmed. Acorn is a pre-release item and has yet to be battle tested
** Down to 60% with special tuning and down to 75% with official tools

Drivers

Where to Buy?

Bitstreams for Acorn CLE-215/215+

Notes from GPUHoarder:

On first launch it will ask you to flash your acorns, it'll skip non-215+ and say an error, but ignore that if you have mixed acorn. Will take a reboot or power cycle to absorb the stand-alone flash image.

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AcornNest X2G

AcornNest X2G allows you to host two Acorn units in any PCIe 2.0 or greater x8 or x16 slot and provides four USB PCIe riser connections for accelerated GPUs without any special motherboard requirements.

Where to Buy?

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AcornNest X4

AcornNest X4 allows you to host four Acorn units in a PCIe 2.0/3.0 x16 or PCIe 3.0 x8 slot without any special motherboard requirements. It includes an onboard DMA engine to reduce CPU load, as well as advanced Acorn power utilization and performance monitoring.

Where to Buy?

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